Lawyer seeks holdout juror probe as Clancy returns
Lindsay Clancy is due back in a Massachusetts courtroom Tuesday for the first hearing since her murder trial ended in a Sept. 4 mistrial, as her lawyer team pushes to toss the case and investigate the holdout juror whose vote deadlocked the panel. The hearing could shape whether prosecutors retry the Duxbury mother charged with killing her three young children.
Key Takeaways
- Clancy returns to court Tuesday for the first time since a Sept. 4 mistrial in her triple-murder case.
- Defense lawyers want the case thrown out and an inquiry into holdout juror Michael Desronvil, including access tied to his cellphone.
- Attorneys argue a retrial would amount to double jeopardy, saying the mistrial lacked “manifest necessity.”
- Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz has not yet said publicly whether his office will retry the case.
- Desronvil’s lawyer has vowed to fight the probe and plans a bar complaint against defense counsel Kevin Reddington.
Three weeks after jurors deadlocked, the former nurse’s defense is pressing for dismissal and for a deeper look at the juror who refused to convict. Coverage of the hearing also lands beside broader money-and-risk stories on BlasterPost’s Wealth Hacks & Passive Income hub, where readers track high-stakes outcomes that reshape lives and livelihoods.
Why is Lindsay Clancy returning to court now?
According to ABC News, Clancy is set to appear Tuesday morning for a hearing that could determine the future of her murder case. It is her first courtroom return after a lengthy, emotional trial that drew national attention to postpartum mental health.
Clancy pleaded not guilty to three murder charges in the deaths of her 5-year-old daughter Cora, 3-year-old son Dawson, and infant son Callan. Prosecutors say the children were strangled at the family’s home in Duxbury, a Boston suburb, on Jan. 24, 2023.
State prosecutors say Clancy, a former nurse, attempted suicide the night of the children’s deaths and was left paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Her defense argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis—described by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as a psychiatric emergency—and was overmedicated when she killed the children and tried to take her own life.
Prosecutors countered that she was criminally responsible and capable of understanding the severity of her actions. After the mistrial, some jurors alleged the panel deadlocked because one juror—later identified as Michael Desronvil—refused to follow the court’s instruction on reasonable doubt.
What is the lawyer asking about the holdout juror?
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has asked the judge to question the holdout juror about his “truthfulness” during jury selection and about some of his actions during deliberations. Reddington also sought preservation of original juror questionnaires for the twelve jurors and six alternates, every jury note, recordings of some sidebars, court-officer logs, sign-in sheets for the jurors’ mobile devices, and video from the jury-room corridor during deliberations.
Fox News reported that criminal defense attorney Donna Rotunno is analyzing the first post-mistrial hearing as Clancy’s lawyers fight to obtain the holdout juror’s cellphone—an escalation that underscores how far the defense wants the inquiry to go. The cellphone push sits alongside the paper trail Reddington wants locked down before any retrial talk advances.
Desronvil has pushed back. In a Sept. 18 statement, he said he “didn’t have any doubts” and that he kept getting cut off when he tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation. His attorney, Edward Andrew Paltzik, argues Desronvil is being harassed for his convictions and has vowed to fight Reddington’s investigation request.
“Kevin Reddington’s disgusting motion to investigate Michael is worthy of nothing but universal condemnation,” Paltzik told Fox News earlier this week, adding that he plans to submit a bar complaint against Reddington. “This is certainly not the final word from us on this subject, but merely our first words,” he said.
Could a retrial raise double jeopardy issues?
In a motion filed last week, Clancy’s attorneys Martin Weinberg and Kevin Reddington argued that retrying the case would subject her to double jeopardy. They said the judge overseeing the case had “viable choices other than declaring a mistrial.”
“There was no manifest necessity for the declaration of a mistrial given the absence of judicial inquiry regarding repeated reports that one juror was refusing to apply the Court’s instructions regarding reasonable doubt and, correspondingly, was failing to discharge his responsibility as a juror to follow and apply the law as instructed,” the attorneys wrote.
Reddington also renewed a motion asking the judge to enter a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility on each count. He argued prosecutors failed to present enough evidence to prove their case. “The government did not present evidence that allows a juror earnestly seeking the truth to determine that the defendant’s guilt on the crime was proved on each element of the offense,” Reddington wrote earlier this month.
Since the mistrial, the defense has filed a flurry of motions to have the case thrown out. The judge may hear arguments on those issues at Tuesday’s session—putting a lawyer-driven strategy front and center while the public waits for prosecutorial clarity.
What have prosecutors said about a possible retrial?
Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz has not spoken publicly about whether his office plans to retry the case since the mistrial was declared on Sept. 4. At the time, Cruz signaled that no immediate call would be made outside an official court proceeding.
“I will let you know there will be no decisions made today regarding that. I’m going to be meeting with our team, and we will address this case further at the appropriate time in the context of an official court proceeding,” Cruz said then.
That leaves Tuesday’s hearing as the clearest near-term checkpoint: whether the court entertains the defense’s dismissal and juror-investigation bids, and whether the state edges closer to announcing a path forward. For now, the lawyer fight over the holdout juror—and the cellphone and records the defense wants preserved—is the story driving Clancy’s return to court.
Readers following the legal chess match can watch for rulings on the double-jeopardy claim, any order preserving juror materials, and the district attorney’s next formal step. Until those pieces move, the mistrial remains an open question rather than a finished chapter.